


we who wake

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [72]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Comforting, Disabled Character, Dreams, Insomnia, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Watching Someone Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 11:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3325649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's still awake half an hour later when Steve's breathing changes and Steve's hand twitches. When Bucky looks over, Steve's eyes are moving behind his eyelids and his face twisting up from sleep-frown into distress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we who wake

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> Working back through my backlog of things to post.

It's one-forty-five in the morning and he can't sleep. 

He's not _losing_ time, it's not slipping; he just isn't really holding onto it, the hours as they pass. He just lets them go, as fas as they're willing. Which isn't as fast as he'd like, to be honest. 

Steve's been asleep since ten. Bucky'd laid there for a while, until he started to get restless enough he was going to wake Steve up. Then he sat up and tried (and failed) to read for a while longer: sentences mixing themselves up on the page, reading a page and realizing he hasn't actually retained a damn word, neither Latin nor Cyrillic script working quite right, trying to mix up, trying to fuse. Fiction, non-fiction, none of it works, so eventually he gives that up, too. 

Now he sits on the bed, arms resting around his knees. 

There's a crescent moon, but mostly the light is the yellow-and-orange of streetlights and stoplights, polluting darkness like a dull fog, tinted with colour but still just leeching it out of everything else, flattening the world. Including the kitten who comes trotting back into the room from her last trip to water, food and cat-box, taken when he wouldn't stay still enough for her to settle. She jumps up on the bed and ducks under his bent knees, then bumps her head into his shins. 

He lets his knees fall down and catches her under the belly to put in his lap. She turns around in circles for a minute before finding his left arm to climb up and rub her face against his chin. Her purr rattles around her chest like it's twice as big as she is, and he catches her to hold her up, hold her pointlessly eye to eye and murmur, "Are you going to grow into that, or are you just going to get worse?" 

She mews slightly and he sighs and lies back against the pillows he set up to read against and drops her on his chest. She settles into her favourite catloaf and within minutes is very nearly faceplanting into his sleep-shirt. She does that, weirdly like a kid insisting they can stay up: sits in her little loaf instead of curling up and just going to sleep, and then ends up with her face smushed into whatever she's sitting on, passed out and limp. Like now. 

He envies her the sleep. Her and Steve both. 

He's spent a lot of time lying awake while Steve sleeps. He's thought that more than once, and he's never sure what kind of thought it should be. None of the memories are happy, but the way they stretch back is . . . comforting. Kind of. Maybe. Or maybe it's oh-God o'clock in the fucking morning and he's grasping at straws because it's been a half-decent week but he can feel everything teetering behind whatever the fuck it is that's keeping him awake. Which, he thinks mockingly at himself, do you _really_ think is more likely? 

Bucky draws his right hand down his face and sighs, and then lets his hand rest on the kitten's back. 

But he's spent a lot of time lying awake while Steve sleeps. Reading school books, listening to Steve's breathing, chewing his thumbnail till it bled, and the opposite of prayer - telling God what a jerk He is and what Bucky'd do if Steve died this time, like any threat could matter. Staying awake because if he fell asleep he might wake up to a world that was shattered and broken and empty in a way he couldn't put into words. Not that he's ever been good at putting any kind of fear into words, but that one especially - 

No. 

And now it's . . . now. And everything's different. And he's still awake. 

He's still awake half an hour later when Steve's breathing changes and Steve's hand twitches. When Bucky looks over, Steve's eyes are moving behind his eyelids and his face twisting up from sleep-frown into distress. 

Nightmare. And Steve only has one nightmare. 

Bucky remembers watching it the first time. From the door. Knowing it was REM, knowing the break in sleep paralysis and the distress indicated a nightmare. No idea what it was. No idea why it upset him, no idea even what the Hell he was feeling that other people would call _upset_ : stayed for a minute, maybe two, and then retreated, from Steve, from the nightmare, from the way his body reacted that he couldn't understand and couldn't name. 

There've been more than a few times since then. But it's at least one thing that - now, anyway - is pretty easy to fix. 

Bucky picks the kitten up and puts her up on the pillow. He pushes himself up on his left elbow, reaches over with his right hand to shake Steve's shoulder, gently, until Steve takes the deep breath that means someone's trying to find consciousness and slits his eyes open. He's not really awake, and the "Bucky?" he manages is groggy and rough with sleep. 

"I'm right here," Bucky says. "You're just dreaming. Ignore it and go back to sleep." 

And it's almost habit, or memory, or something, but he ends up lying back and pulling Steve over to him, over him, like he did when Steve swam in and out of fevers and couldn't always tell what was real and what wasn't. He was smaller then, but it doesn't really matter. And Steve's _really_ still mostly asleep because he settles there without arguing, half on Bucky's torso with his arm over the rest, using the front of Bucky's shoulder for a pillow. Arms working around Bucky, hand tucking under his ribs, settling completely. 

If Steve'd been awake at all, he'd've argued about it, because he knows Bucky isn't going to fall asleep like this. But Bucky figures he's not fucking sleeping _anyway_ , so it probably doesn't make any difference. 

The kitten half crawls, half falls her way over to curl up beside his temple to start purring again, and even if there's no real point and not even any real reason, Bucky can't help rolling his eyes, maybe at both of them. Maybe at himself. And doesn't mean it. 

Steve should seem heavy and doesn't. He's still warm. And it's not like Bucky was going to sleep anyway.


End file.
